Public comment: Child care, families, women's issues to be discussed at Provincetown forum
PROVINCETOWN — After two years, the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women will host its first in-person event at Provincetown Town Hall.
The event, which will be held from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, is an opportunity for women and female-identifying members of the Cape Cod community to speak about issues that matter to women, children, and families on Cape Cod and the Islands, said Ellen Moorhouse, communications and marketing manager for the commission.
What topics will be discussed?
"The meat of this event is about public testimony," she said. "We want to hear about the issues that are impacting folks lives. People can either read written remarks or speak off the cuff for three to five minutes."
From LGBTQ issues to domestic violence to childcare, Moorhouse said the commission is all ears. Testimony, she said, will inform policy priorities for the 2022-2023 legislative session.
"We will take this testimony, and then research and compile what we've heard from real people," she said. "We then kick that up to the Statehouse in the form of advocacy and bill legislation."
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In addition to representatives from the commission, including the Cape and Islands Commission on the Status of Women, members of the Common Start Coalition and Barnstable County Human Rights Advisory Commission will also be present at the forum.
Legislators from the Cape area will also attend the event, said Moorhouse, including state Rep. Kip Diggs, D-Osterville, state Rep. Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown, and U.S. Rep. William "Bill" Keating, D-Massachusetts.
For Moorhouse, the government can often lose touch with real people, as they become caught up with the political cycle. The public forum has the capacity, she said, to remind legislators about what's important to the people they serve.
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Through surveys, research, data collection and partnerships with other organizations, the coalition does its best to tackle the issues women raise at public hearings.
"Without input from the people, sometimes government isn't as responsive as they could be," she said. "We try really hard to be that liaison between these narratives and the action the Statehouse and legislators can take."
While the coalition did release a virtual survey and subsequently released "Women in the Workforce," a report about how COVID-19 affected women in 2021, the coalition placed all face-to-face presentations on hold for the duration of the pandemic throughout its 11 regional commissions.
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"It hasn't been the same," she said. "Usually, these regional commissions host their own public hearing events and all that data is kicked up to the state groups. We hear county advocacy, and we ourselves host events all in the name of public testimony."
Other public hearings across the state will follow the Provincetown event, and Moorhouse said the commission and area advocacy organizations are gearing up for January.
"A new legislature will begin and a new session will kick off and we are all interested in identifying legislative priorities in advance of that," she said.
To register: https://bit.ly/MCSWptown
Contact Rachael Devaney at rdevaney@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter: @RachaelDevaney.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: MA Commission on the Status of Women holds forum in Provincetown
